Most gas sensors and analyzers, e.g. electrochemical, catalytic combustion, semiconductor, infrared, ultraviolet, flame ionization, gas chromatographs and mass spectrophotometers, are adversely affected by water and particulate solids. It is conventional practice to flow such dirty gas streams through water traps and/or filters, usually paper or fritted glass or metal filters, to provide a clean gas stream to the analyzer. Many gas streams have condensable liquids that together with entrained particulate matter form a solid sludge that plugs filters. Examples of particularly difficult sample streams are stack analysis for combustion control and incinerator exhaust analysis. In these cases, both condensables and particulates exist, and frequently dissolved corrosive gases, such as SO.sub.3 and HCl. Conventional filtering techniques suffer from entrainment of contaminants or plugging of filter media. Even filters using permeation driers, inertial filtering, water wash and other methods, have proven to require very frequent maintenance and are marginal at best.